Trump's tariffs sow worries among Iowa farmers, manufacturers

MCPO Roger Collins - This may be rural legend, but knowing the USDA it sure seems possible. At one time the single largest USDA subsidy that went to a non-corporate farmer went to one of the Washington Bullets who got his subsidy for NOT farming his large northern Virginia estate, that had NOT been actually farmed in over 60 years, through a program called the Conservation Reserve Program.

NYT

Direct payments are the $4 billion to $5 billion given each year to owners of farmland that had traditionally grown various crops, including corn, wheat, soybeans, cotton and rice. These resulted in widely criticized payments to wealthy absentee “farmers” in places like Manhattan — including over $340,000 to a Rockefeller scion, Mark F. Rockefeller, The New York Post reported earlier this year — who owned land that grew nothing. Even the farm lobby backed down on that.

Yet most of the estimated $50 billion that might have been saved on direct payments over 10 years — and perhaps far more, depending on commodity prices — was plowed back into other subsidy programs. As the Cato Institute’s Sallie James put it, what the proposed bills “offer with one hand, they take with the other” for programs that “are even more likely to distort markets.”

These include increased crop insurance and increased target prices for crops that guarantee farm incomes. According to the Environmental Working Group, crop insurance subsidies already cost taxpayers $9 billion a year, and flow overwhelmingly to the wealthiest farmers and agribusinesses. While the wealthiest farmers collect over $1 million a year each in insurance subsidies, and 10,000 get over $100,000, the lowest 80 percent of policy holders collect on average just $5,000 each, according to the group.

Archer Daniels Midland, Agria and those like them. Some are sheltered under shell corporations, but after they squeezed most of the Mom n Pops out, the big subsidy cash became a genuine "for profit" venture. It's not so profitable at the 1000 acre level but once you get in the millions scattered throughout the "bread basket" the scale is to your advantage. Both in political contributions required and return on investment. Once it passes a certain point it becomes more profitable to set aside the land and receive the cash than to farm it.

CWO3 (Join to see) - ADM is not a grower. Agria is not a grower. They don't squeeze out Mom and Pops. They're buyers, traders, and ancillary service providers.

It not the scale that kills small farms. The problems for Mom and Pops:
-Over capitalization in good times.
-Inadequate cash reserves for bad times.
-Lack of vertical integration. (Farm to table)
-Mono-culture crops.
-Inadequate development of related revenue streams.
-Inadequate marketing
-Taking on the big boys head to head.